The GOP candidate for Missouri Governor, Eric Greitens, has brought out 'the big guns' - starring in a campaign advert in which he fires hundreds of rounds of ammunition from a massive machine gun.

But Democratic rival Attorney General Chris Koster has ridiculed the video, claiming Greitens' message amounts to nothing more than 'let's fire machine guns and do sit-ups into the camera'.

The pair will face off in a November 8 gubernatorial election to be Governor of Missouri after Greitens clinched his party's support this week.

Eric Greitens fires a Gatting-style machine gun and declares he will bring out the 'big guns'

His rival, Chris Koster, says the video has nothing to do with proving he can govern properly

Amid images of Greitens, a former Navy SEAL, loading the weapon and grinning, the video declares he will be fighting with 'the big guns' - by protecting jobs, defending the 2nd amendment, cutting spending, protecting life and fighting what it says is a corrupt Democratic machine.

The race for Missouri Governor features many of the same undercurrents as the presidential campaign between Republican businessman Donald Trump and Democratic former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Like Trump, Greitens portrays himself as a macho outsider ready to blow up politics as usual - as shown in the video released in the days before Tuesday's primary.

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An early attack ad, which triggered the machine gun response, hinted that the brash Greitens is perhaps the one Republican that Koster, who carries decades of political experience, least wanted to face.

Launching his general election campaign Wednesday, Koster said of the video: 'I don't get what this has to do with running the government.'

Yet Greitens noted that there were no attack ads aimed against any of the other Republican primary candidates.

Greitens, with the machine gun, grins his way through the campaign ad

Greitens is featured in the clip preparing the weapon before firing it for the rest of the ad

Missouri Republican gubernatorial candidate Eric Greitens, holds his son, Joshua, as he spoke to a crowd of supporters on Tuesday

'Chris Koster was so afraid of our campaign that he felt that the only way that he could win is by trying to rig the election by choosing the opponent that he was going to run against,' Greitens said on Tuesday night.

He has traveled the world as a photographer on humanitarian missions documenting the conditions of war refugees and homeless children.

He joined the Navy in 2001, just months before the September 11 attacks, and later was chlorine-gassed in a suicide bomb attack in Iraq.

Greitens speaks to a crowd of supporters at the DoubleTree Hotel Chesterfield after securing the GOP nomination on Tuesday

After his military career, he founded The Mission Continues, a nonprofit that connects veterans with volunteer work to ease their transition back home.

Greitens developed a nationwide network of donors for the organization, some of whom have helped finance his gubernatorial campaign.

Greitens won the split Republican primary with less than 35 percent of the vote. Many voters said they were drawn to Greitens by his outsider's call to shake up the political establishment.

'I think if we were able to measure it, we'd find that a lot of the Trump voters in the spring were Greitens voters in the August primary,' said Dave Robertson, a political science professor at the University of Missouri-St Louis.

Greitens, 42, of St. Louis, has a remarkable resume. He's been a Navy SEAL, Rhodes scholar, White House fellow, boxer, martial arts expert and best-selling author

Greitens and the other GOP candidates sought to tap into anger among some conservatives about the handling of several racial incidents in the state.

The candidates sharply criticized the way Democratic Governor Jay Nixon responded to riots following the 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson and to protests over racial concerns last fall at the University of Missouri in Columbia.

Greitens was particularly dismissive of the student protesters, comparing them with the young military members he served with in Iraq and Afghanistan.

'I find it a little hard to hear when I hear students complaining that life on campus is just too tough,' Greitens said during debates.